Oracle Buys Cloud-based Customer Service Company RightNow For $1.5 Billion

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Oracle this morning announced that it has acquiredRightNow – both companies are listed on NASDAQ – for $43 per share or roughly $1.5 billion net of RightNow’s cash and debt. With the acquisition, Oracle is adding a robust cloud-based customer service offering (see graph below) to its own Public Cloud solution – more info on that here. RightNow’s share price closed at $35.96 last week, so the deal represents a premium of roughly 20 percent on its closing price on Friday the 21st of October.

RightNow’s solutions help companies handle customer interactions across a multitude of channels, including call and contact centers, the Web and social networks.

Its products are used by nearly 2,000 organizations across the globe, the company says.

Founded in 1997, RightNow went public in 2004. The company boasted a market cap of $1.2 billion at market close last week.

The acquisition by Oracle is expected to close later this year or in early 2012. As usual, the transaction is subject to a number of things, including RightNow stockholder approval, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.

Oracle has closed 6 acquisitions this year. While its takeovers of RightNow and Endeca are pending, the company has completed the purchases of Datanomic, FatWire, Inquira, select intellectual property assets of Ndevr, Ksplice and Pillar Data Systems in 2011 alone.

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Crunchbase

OverviewOracle is shifting the complexity from IT, moving it out of the enterprise by engineering hardware and software to work together—in the cloud and in the data center. By eliminating complexity and simplifying IT, Oracle enables its customers—400,000 of them in more than 145 countries around the world—to accelerate innovation and create added value for their customers.
By engineering out the …

OverviewRightnow is a technology company that designs and develops cloud customer relationship management and customer support applications. Its product portfolio includes SaaS based call center automation software products and services, and sales force automation software and services.
Rightnow was established in 1997, based inBozeman, Montana. It was founded by Greg Gianforte.